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A comment on We Killed Expertise (And why we need it back.) (2017). Parent comment

Re:We Killed Expertise (And why we need it back.) (2017) by dfxm12 on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:41AM (#26671780)
how the hell did antivaxers become a significant portion of the population

Some people see Jenny McCarthy as a great model and assume she's knows more about health than she does. People put misplaced respect into a guy like Novak Djokovic. It's OK to respect his stance on backhands, but why does anyone care about his stance that he's against vaccines?

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Re:We Killed Expertise (And why we need it back.) (2017) by GVIrish on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:58AM (#26671943)
This. Reverence for celebrity also engenders a weird trust in celebrity viewpoints even when they are wildly misguided and completely divorced from a particular celebrity's training/knowledge/experience.

Not to say a tennis player and former MTV host started the anti-vax movement, but celebrities can fan the flames of ignorance pretty easily because of how much people pay attention to and trust them.

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